Analysis of parasitic motion in parallelogram compliant mechanism

In this paper, an analytical method for parasitic rotation and displacement calculations of parallelogram compliant mechanisms is formulated. Mathematical model is proposed for the geometrical parametric study of parasitic motion, through which the approach to reduce parasitic motion is obtained. The formulations for calculating the locations of the points on end-effectors with no theoretical parasitic displacement are presented. The analytical model predictions are confirmed by the finite element analysis. Theoretical basis is built for improving the output precision of parallelogram compliant mechanisms. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.